#wukchumni

[ranahan]

Marie Wilcox, Who Saved Her Native Language From Extinction, Dies at 87

[weemietime]

[coe-aildi]

This weekend, check out language stories by community members themselves!

Less than 200 years ago, 90 Native languages and as many as 300 dialects were spoken in California. Today, only half are spoken but ambitious projects are revitalizing them. 

Join us in listening to Emergence Magazine's Webby Award winning Language Keepers podcast on the stories of Wukchumni, Karuk, Kawaiisu, & Tolowa Dee-ni'.

 https://emergencemagazine.org/story/language-keepers

[zhaleys]

Queer and Native Identities

Read more

[thatwritererinoriordan]

Language Keepers – Emergence Magazine

This six-part multimedia experience shares the stories of four Indigenous communities in California who are revitalizing their languages.

Wanna see something pure and good? Check out this project to enrich some of California’s indigenous languages. 

[songandcrest]

81-Year-Old Woman, Last Fluent Speaker of Her Language, Learns to Type to Make a Dictionary

Marie Wilcox, an octogenarian Native American woman from the San Joaquin Valley in California, was born on Thanksgiving in 1933; she grew up in a one-room house with the grandmother who delivered her and spoke her native Wukchumni, and I believe this video will assure you—Marie is better than you or I will ever be.

[mutedtongues]

Marie Wilcox is the last fluent speaker of the Wukchumni language.

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRDmRXCizEM)

[heroseries]

#40: Marie Wilcox

by Anika Streitfeld Luskin

What struck me about this story is the way in which Marie has embraced being the last member of her tribe who speaks its language. I was moved by her calling to embark on the dictionary project - with a focus and passion that calls to mind the writer's impulse to put something on paper, but is infused with something else too: humility, and steadiness, the diligence of this unexpected but determined archivist.

I love the way Marie uses her computer - "pecking" at the old keyboard - and the way her daughter and grandson have taken up this project along with her. It feels, from this glimpse, as if they are invested in the dictionary as a legacy, but perhaps just as much that they are deeply devoted to their soft-spoken, exacting matriarch. Her daughter is so patient; her grandson so earnest in his attempts to converse with her in Wukchumni, that their love for her feels palpable.

A therapist friend recently told me that she often says to her clients, "you didn't make this shit up, but it's your responsibility to deal with it." And I had a similar feeling about Marie's situation - that she certainly didn't ask to be the last speaker of her native language, but that she has taken seriously this opportunity to preserve it, and perhaps too, the legends and traditions it carries with it. This seems like a noble attempt to hold onto the past; part activism, part tribute, part love story.